Five common excuses for poor flight discipline

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Unwary aviators fine many rationalizations for their undisciplined and often foolish actions. Five common rationalizations for poor flight discipline follow:
1 if no one gets to knows about the infraction and nobody gets hurt, what’s the problem?
2 everyone knows that there are safety margins built into all the regulations.
3 rules are simply to protect inept flyers from themselves.
4 this business is over-regulated. Pilots did this for decades before the government stepped in.
5 I can’t push the envelope and really improve if I stay within all the rules.
It is easy to see how one could buy into these rationalizations if they were looking for a reason to do so. Here are the reasons why it is unprofessional, and unsafe, to do so.
Policies, procedures, and regulations exist for a variety of reasons, and the implications of poor discipline are often unseen by the violators themselves. Small breeches of discipline that seem safe or acceptable in the sterile training environment of day-to-day operations around the “home drome” can have catastrophic implications in other more complex environments. With today’s congested airspace and jumbo jet airliners which carry hundred of passengers, the casualties from even a single accident can be so severe that margins of safety must be built into the regulations to protect innocent lives.
In general aviation, the less structured environment must rely heavily on self-regulation. This environment coupled with lower experience levels, mandate a conservative approach. Let’s analyze each one of the “five excuses” and see if they hold water in light of the consequences of failed discipline just discussed.

If no one gets to knows about the infraction and nobody gets hurt, what’s the problem?
The real problem is that you can never have an intentional infraction in which “no one knows”. This is because the most significant “one” is the perpetrator! Psychologists tell us that getting away with something once is very likely to lead to subsequent attempts at the same or similar activities. Noncompliance can be a slippery downhill path. In short, you are never really alone, and an intentional deviation will likely preprogram you to try again.

Everyone knows that there are safety margins built into all regulations
Yes, there usually are, and for good reasons! Safety margins are designed to account for a combination of error tolerances in instruments, navigation equipment, and some human error. To disregard a regulation based on assumed built-in margin of safety presupposes that everything else is working perfectly. When flyers make this decision, they are betting their life, the lives of others, on a flawed assumption.(to be continued)